Fourth person here. I can't turn the channel fast enough when I see her on it.

Fifth

02-01-2010, 08:33 PM

MrMet

Re: Jay Leno's New Show

Quote:

Originally Posted by AsIs;3813715;

For the network it didn't really fail. It did about as well as they expected.

The plus side for the network was that it cost very little to do Jay's Show.

The minus side: I don't think they thought they would have such trouble getting guests, which was short sighted of them. Why would a rival network help Jay's show against thier own. There was also a backlash against the lack of scripted programming. And the final nail in the coffin of the show was the affiliates rebelling against the low ratings it brought to their newscasts. The Network factored in thier costs, not the affiliates.

For the network, the failures were in the area of affiliate relations, not profit, for Leno's show. However, they have reported that they were going to lose money this year on the Tonight Show, so there was a loss for the network there.

With regards to the guests, I'm not sure that there was a major issue there, nor do I agree it would have been short-sighted to be surprised that other networks would block talent as guests. Sure, having an ABC or CBS star appear on Leno's show "helps" a competing network. But it also helps their own network, since the point of going on a talk show is to promote the show on that network. Since actors cross networks to promote shows in late night, I don't think it was that foolish to look for them to do so in primetime.

But even if that did come in to play, I don't think it was significant enough to be an issue in producing the show. When you look at the most memorable celebrity appearances on talk shows, very few of those are network TV stars. The stars that really stand out to me are Hugh Grant, Drew Barrymore, Jouqin Phoenix, and Farrah Fawcett. None of them were network TV stars. So if Jay can't get Simon Baker, or Rob Lowe, who cares? At the end of the day, stars want to do talk shows to promote projects. They tend to go to the show with the largest audience, in order to gain the most from promotion. If there was trouble booking guests for either Leno or Conan, I think it was due much more to audience size than networks trying to protect their own products.

I don't watch Leno, so I didn't see it, but Slash wore a "I'm with CoCo" button on his guitar strap when he was on the show Tuesday night. One story I read said that the NBC censors edited it out of most shots, but not all of them. There was also a guy a while back who took a picture with Leno and held his palm out to the camera: he'd written "Coco FTW" on it. Kind of juvenile, but still funny.